In 1999, brothers Chad and Branden Miller sat in the backyard and sketched out the rest of their lives. Winemakers by trade, they always drank their own homebrews while making wine. Eventually they figured out they liked hanging around people who drink beer more than people who drink wine, Chad recalled.

As their vision for a brewery began to take shape, words from their father guided them.

“Our father once told us as kids, ‘Boys, just do one thing and do it better than anyone else and you’ll find your success,'” Chad Miller said. “Instead of a brewery that offers a whole plethora of styles and do them all OK, we wanted to do one thing and do it better than anybody.”

And Black Shirt Brewery aims to do just that, building an entire business and a lineup of beers around a single recipe for a red ale that took three years to develop. After all those years of planning – and the usual bureaucratic red tape – the city of Denver granted Black Shirt a certificate of occupancy this week.

To celebrate, the brewery at 3719 Walnut Street in Denver’s River North district will open its doors for a sneak preview Saturday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. with $4 flights and $5 glasses of that meticulously crafted red. A grand opening is planned for mid-October, with details to come, Chad Miller said.

The River North Arts District (RiNO) area is fast becoming a hotbed of small, interesting breweries. River North Brewery at 2401 Blake has grown fast and won praise, and Our Mutual Friend Malt and Brew is awaiting final approval from the city to open its doors at 2810 Larimer.

Next year, the Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project plans to move into The Source, a planned high-end artisan market in an 1880s foundry building at 33rd and Brighton with an eclectic mix of tenants.

On the Black Shirt Facebook page, the brewery describes itself as “a progressive, artisanal brewery” focused on “creating unique, assertive, vibrant, complex, and ultimately perfectly-balanced beer. We do everything by hand, in small batches. No gimmicks. No bull****.”

The owners – the brothers and Chad’s wife, Carissa – got interest from potential investors but decided to run the company themselves. They saved for years to get the four-barrel brewhouse and taproom going, including building everything from the bar to the walls by hand, Chad Miller said.

The brothers settled on a red ale because they were after an all-season beer, one with a strong enough backbone to stand up to a cold winter and also be citrusy and light enough to enjoy in summer, Miller said. He won’t delve into what distinguishes the beer – keeping it secret make sense, given the time involved in making it and the recipe’s singular importance to the brewery.

Yet the original red ale will not be the only beer on tap on Walnut Street. Black Shirt takes the same malt bill from that recipe and builds on that using different yeast strains, hop varietals, aging techniques and vessels “to showcase what we can do with our main recipe,” Miller said.

So alongside the original, Black Shirt will offer a saison, an imperial red IPA and sessionable pale red.

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